This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were ...
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This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were all the rage. A book market, with its professionals: stationers, copyists, booksellers and authors, emerged. A cosmopolitan society responded enthusiastically. Al-Jā?i? had, for most of his life, earned his living as an influential counselor, a special adviser to the elite. By the time of his death in 868/9, he had become a professional author. Al-Jā?i? was a bibliomaniac and prided himself on his expertise in Kalām, a dialectical method for ascertaining the truth, the predominant intellectual discipline of his day, a rigorous study of the nature of God and the universe derived from close observation of creation and informed by inferential and analogical reasoning about the suprasensible world. Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books concentrates on The Book of Living, the most important work by al-Jā?i?, a documentation of almost all creation, from insect life, such as beetles and flies, to reptiles, such as lizards and snakes, to birds and mammals. The primary focus of the study is the extensive praise of books that The Book of Living contains. This is also the story of how al-Jā?i? thought that his book would save his society from the disorder it had fallen into through its addiction to argument and dissent, an addiction that created social tumult.Less

Al-Jā-hiẓ : In Praise of Books

James Montgomery

Published in print: 2013-12-30

This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were all the rage. A book market, with its professionals: stationers, copyists, booksellers and authors, emerged. A cosmopolitan society responded enthusiastically. Al-Jā?i? had, for most of his life, earned his living as an influential counselor, a special adviser to the elite. By the time of his death in 868/9, he had become a professional author. Al-Jā?i? was a bibliomaniac and prided himself on his expertise in Kalām, a dialectical method for ascertaining the truth, the predominant intellectual discipline of his day, a rigorous study of the nature of God and the universe derived from close observation of creation and informed by inferential and analogical reasoning about the suprasensible world. Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books concentrates on The Book of Living, the most important work by al-Jā?i?, a documentation of almost all creation, from insect life, such as beetles and flies, to reptiles, such as lizards and snakes, to birds and mammals. The primary focus of the study is the extensive praise of books that The Book of Living contains. This is also the story of how al-Jā?i? thought that his book would save his society from the disorder it had fallen into through its addiction to argument and dissent, an addiction that created social tumult.